Ultimate Vista to 7 Upgrade - how long ?

[MuppetandChums]

Before I throw up my hands in horror and kiss the MacBook Pro can anyone shed any light on my upgrade from Vista to 7 ( Ultimate ) ?

Ignoring all the sane advice to do a clean install.....50 apps to reinstall....couldnt face it I opted for an upgrade.

1. Ran CHKDSK on all OS & Applications partitions.All OK. No bad Sectors.
2. Defragged everything.
3. Ran Tweak VI to check/optimise Registry.
4. No OS tweaks.
5. Disconnected all external eSATA/USB data stores.
6. Ran Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor - highlighted iTunes (de-authorise), IntelliType/Point drivers and RAID driver ? for Adaptec RAID (1225A) 2 channel card (not in use but installed)

Have MS Student Upgrade DVD. Opted to install upgrade in existing partition C: 56Gb with 50% free.

Booted from MS Win. 7 DVD, it started & I guess set up the install partition with required files then downloaded some files to update Vista from the Internet and asked me to boot back into Vista OS and run the upgrade from there ( weird I thought). Followed the localisation instructions and left the upgrade to run overnight.

My Vista OS is some 26GB, the Apps. (some 50 applications) are 10GB and located in Disk Two are the User Profiles/Data of some 30GB. The rest ( 250Gb on Disk 2 and 400Gb on Disk 3) are static data files, iso, avi, mp3, mp4.....cannot see how they'd be relevant to the upgrade process/time.

After 12 hours ( yes 12 hours ) the Dell G2410 is in Energy Saver Mode so cannot ' see ' what's happening. Disk activity NIL....so I hard reboot...back into the HD not the install DVD.

Win 7 splash screen comes up it says....not finished the Install Process ...reboot and its now continuing the install ? HD light flickering...disk chattering.

How long is this going to take ?

If the Dell G2410 is in Energy Saver Mode how will I know when its finished ?

Has anyone done this upgrade successfully ?

When do I call it a day, reformat C : drive and clean install ? ( and set aside 2 + days to reinstall all the applications )?

Thanks in advance

M&C

 

[Tews]

I have heard of Vista upgrades taking up to 20 hours... Yes, it works, but I would always recommend a clean install over an upgrade... stability over expediency wins every time..